Automatic PLC code generation based on virtual engineering model

Today’s automotive firms, regardless the systems they use (e.g. mass production, mass customisation, just-in-time, etc.) face common challenges that can result in sudden and frequent disruptions across the supply chain. Manufacturing systems should rapidly respond to these disruptions. This can be made possible by introducing new smart engineering methods and technologies to enable realisation of high level of reconfigurable and dynamic manufacturing processes to improve the overall performance of manufacturing plants. This paper investigates a methodology to develop a digital model for a fuel-cell assembly system and then utilises the developed model to automatically generate machine’s Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) code, connectivity, and process data records. These automatically generated parts can then be used in order to create a Cyber Physical System (CPS). The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the automatic generation of the control code and structure it in order to be effectively and efficiently used in industrial applications. The on-going DIGIMAN project [1], which aims to deliver a proof of process fuel-cell assembly system for the automotive industry, is being used as a proof of concept to validate the proposed methodology and framework